JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – The resource base of the Wafi-Golpu project, in Papua New Guinea (PNG), has increased by 57% to over one-billion tons, joint-venture (JV) partner Harmony Gold said on Wednesday.

This confirmed the copper/gold project as one of the highest-grade copper/gold porphyry systems in South East Asia, which Harmony Gold CEO Graham Briggs said validated the company’s long-held belief that PNG was a “game-changing asset”.

Harmony owns the copper/gold project in a JV with Newcrest of Australia and plans to bring the $3-billion mine into production in 2016.

Further, once the prefeasibility study of Wafi-Golpu has been completed, more ounces from PNG may be added to reserves.

“The company’s resource and reserve base support our strategy of producing high-quality ounces at lower costs. Harmony has invested a great deal in the expansion of its production base in South Africa and PNG,” he said.

As of June 30, Harmony’s mineral reserves at its South African and PNG assets amounted to 41.6-million ounces of gold, with reserves of Kusasalethu, Doornkop, Tshepong and Phakisa, in South Africa, and Hidden Valley, in PNG, constituting 45% of total mineral reserves.

In moving forward, the miner would improve its business planning process, using realistic benchmarks and targets it believed to be realistic.

Also, cut-off grades have been revised, and areas, which require more geological work and minor reefs, have been excluded from resources. Results from extensive underground development and borehole drilling during the year have been used to improve the confidence in the geological models of our operations.

“Our ‘life-of-mine’ plans support our commitment to improving the grades from our underground operations, lowering our cost base and benchmarking our costing parameters - both internally across our operations and externally against other gold producers,” Briggs concluded.

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